Or: A very short introduction to turbulence
guest post by Tim van Beek
Have a look at this picture:
Then look at this one:
Do they look similar?
They should! They are both examples of a Kelvin-Helmoltz instability.
The first graphic is a picture of billow clouds (the fancier name is altostratus undulatus clouds):
The picture is taken from:
? C. Donald Ahrens: Meteorology Today, 9th edition, Brooks/Cole, Kentucky, 2009.
The second graphic:
shows a lab experiment and is taken from:
? G.L. Brown and A. Roshko, online available Density effects and large structure in turbulent mixing layers, Journal of Fluid Mechanics64 (1974), 775-816.
Isn’t it strange that clouds in the sky would show the same pattern as some gases in a small laboratory experiment? The reason for this is not quite understood today. In this post, I would like to talk a little bit…
View original post 1,811 more words
